absolutely nothing at all
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Maybe Yuki's fear was not Akito's existence, but the remnants that had always been there hiding within his own self...


**fandom - Fruits Basket  
title - absolutely nothing at all.  
pairing - akito + yuki; yuki x kyo  
rating - pg-13  
description - Maybe Yuki's fear was not Akito's existence, but the remnants that had always been there hiding within his own self...**

**disclaimer - furuba isn't mine.**

**absolutely nothing at all.  
by miyamoto yui**

Scribble, scribble.

With my stubby little hand, I hold the crayon tightly and press harder on the ground. I'm on my knees and I'm making a drawing with my whole body and I stare at the floor covered with a large white piece of paper that is even bigger than me. It is an assignment that I have to do.

"Draw a picture of yourself." I tell myself over and over again but the image does not get through. I am trying to do exactly what the teacher says but it is not the same. She said not to draw ourselves with a head and legs and a heart. It is to draw something that represents us.

I do not know if she knows something. I am almost scared that she knows that I am cursed by the rat. Maybe the children told her but that is impossible. Hatori isn't that careless. He knows this more than anyone I think.

So there I stop.

I see a disarray of lines. Red lines. They do not connect. And I wonder if that is all I ever amount to. It makes some sense in my small heart and yet it doesn't. There are things that you can only analyze from a grown up's perspective like knowing how to get angry at someone who has betrayed your trust when a promise is broken. A broken promise to a child immediately makes a kid hard-hearted towards the individual who has offended them, but a grown-up will try to find some kind of compensation and rationalization for the situation, overanalyzing it until the meaning is totally irrelevant to what it once was.

I start to cry and I want to scream.

It is then that Akito enters the scene. He closes the door behind him.  
I wipe my tears away with my sleeve.

A shiver goes down my spine. Akito says that he will not do anything to me once he sees the drawing on the ground. He says that he will snatch at my picture and just destroy it because everything that is mine should also be his. Everything this is mine will never be truly mine. "It will always belong to me because you belong to me, Yuki."  
The voice isn't gentle, but it is not threatening. There is a kind of fear that appears in its slight quivering and I see that Akito is looking straight down at me. Akito's left hand takes some strands of my hair from the top of my head and pulls on them as if they're tightly-wound guitar strings. A pulsating pain sends chills throughout my lifeless, robotic body.  
I say nothing. I am scared but I do not say anything.

This is the game we play.

This is the way this person loves me.

This is the only person that pays attention to me. Brother slapped his hand away from me as if I were disgusting. Mother talks in riddles, deceiving even herself.  
And here I am trying to speak, but scared to because if I lose this, will there be anything left?

To reach out, like with my brother, you will be rejected.  
If others find out my secret, their memory will be erased.  
If I want to be accepted, it will be like her taking advantage of my existence.

I want to ask Akito why is it that we look alike, but I bite my tongue before lowering my pride.

"You get to live outside of a room," Akito says to me. "I don't. I have to memorize every part of that dungeon."  
I breathe deeper, seething through my teeth as my scalp feels like it's losing one hair at a time, tearing leaves of a flower one by one. 'He loves me, he loves me not' is the unspoken hymn of disintegration when he curls one finger over a single strand, plucking each one slowly but surely as always.

I wince, but when I look up, I do not have tears. I give him a blank look.

Apathy is the worst temporary relief medicine that anyone can prescribe.

After letting go of my crayon, my head looks straight up and I pull Akito's cheeks softly with my two hands. I pull that face lowers towards mine in hesitation and anticipation. There is a curving of my lips that I do not understand. It is just something I know Akito's infected me with.

It has to hurt. Love has to hurt...

Those eyes, calculating and cold, analyze my every move in an acidic manner, wanting me to ask for more and erase me at the same time for catching them off-guard.

Akito's bangs are touching my chin.

We know we are exactly the same. We know we want to pull away and say we are different the other. But the circle of the curse continues and we give more fuel to make the flames even brighter.

And then, Akito pulls on my yukata and tears it as it falls down around my waist. Scratching my back with sharp nails, blood falls onto the crayon-stained drawing of myself. I grab onto the paper as I lean over and wince in pain, smiling a little.  
My body fears this and my mind accepts it. It is scary when parts of yourself do not agree and you can't cut any part without bleeding all over the place for everyone to see.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?! Don't make a fool of me, Yuki!" Akito screams over and over until everything becomes a blur...

Years later, I wake up in the middle of the night with streams of sweat fallingdown the sides of my face. And I end up sneaking into Kyo's part of the room. I laugh to myself that the prince in high school keeps a cat. Now, we've come down from the fortress, older and more careless.

_"Just go and don't look back. I can't choose and I won't. I'll take care of it..." that soft voice tells me after kissing my forehead. Tohru's frame becomes smaller as we run hand in hand._

Running away over and over from one place to another, it is no solution. It is just a prolonged sentence to death of ou own accord.

I hold him down with both wrists locked under my vice grip. He blinks and looks up with a stern expression as the beads of sweat fall from my head.  
At night, there is someone in the shadows. Someone who is not the perfect prince. Someone dirty and aggressive and blood-thirsty.

"You had the dream again, didn't you?" Kyo asks with defensive eyes and a sharp tongue. He tries to pull up, but my grip gets even tighter, almost cutting off his circulation.  
I ignore the question.

"Until you defeat me, I won't let you leave, Kyo. Your life is mine," I smirk at him, but my smile becomes wider and wider, almost maddening.  
It won't let me go, whatever it is. Something that has gone past Akito and even my own fears, making an entity on its own.

Kyo's messed up orange hair shines under the small amount of moonlight that gets through the semi-closed curtains of the motel room. He turns his face, but his knife-like stare pushes into me. I gaze at his profile, thinking it is beautiful and tragic at the same time.

Akito's poison has finally affected me..  
...and I let it be...  
...I want to be immersed in it.

There is no other way for me to be, to exist inside my head...

As I lean down to purposely bite on his neck to make small red dots bleed, Kyo's fingers push against my hands, wanting to grip them as best as they could.

_But you are the only who can accept someone like this.  
That's why I won't let you go, Kyo..._

Later, when I am about to fall asleep on top of him, Kyo wraps his arms around me completely and protectively. Not saying a word.

Absolutely nothing at all...

**Owari.**

**11/06/05 (Sunday) 5:11am**


End file.
